Day 7

Montana Saga – Day 7

Quite a difference in our previous sunny skies. Notice the layers of dark, angry clouds to a "normal" layer of rain clouds.

Alan writes:

Great Day!  Best day of the trip so far.  I’ll let Mimi tell you about the animals we saw and she photographed so well- I’ll just talk about the trip to East Glacier.  This is by far the wildest and most remote part of the park.  All the literature about the park says it’s the heart of the park and I believe it.  We drove Hwy. 2 again but this time passed the west entrance and went all the way to Browning.  I remembered two things about Browning.  One was that the mountains suddenly ran out here and we rode on through decreasing altitudes of plains or prairie with the occasional arroyo, gulch or box canyon.  The second was that Browning will never win any beauty contests.  I know that’s harsh but there is nothing pretty about this town.  Here we turned north on state Hwy. 464 and returned to open spaces and natural beauty.  This was a roundabout way of getting to East Glacier, traveling the bow instead of the string, but it afforded incredible views from a distance of the peaks whose summits were hidden in gray clouds.  Once in the park we noted that there was much less people and the roads were less numerous and less kept, all resulting in a kind of more personal feeling with the landscape.  Here, I commented more than once that you could simply step off this road and also step off the grid.  We stopped many times to view wildlife through binoculars, sometimes at distances of more than a mile.  Though the total numbers were less, you could create a quick crowd by angling your binoculars and camera at a specific distant point and cars and people would stop and congregate and ask what you were seeing.  We met some folks from Michigan and a sweet lady from Texas this way.  After exhausting the viewing possibilities (not really!) of this portion of the park we exited and drove up Hwy 89 north to state Hwy. 17 which ran north and west to the Canadian border.  This road was even less maintained and we encountered numerous free-range cattle that seemed to have a distinct preference for the road itself!  We rode looking for Grizzly bear but, once again, we were un-successful.  On the way back we ate at a place called the Cattle Baron Supper Club.  One of the folks at the park said that it was rated in some magazine as one of the 10 best steaks in the country.  I think this may have been a piece of carefully planted urban/local legend.  I think someone may have said,  “That’s one of the biggest steaks I’ve ever had,” and this morphed to “one of the best,” and then “one of the 10 best,” etc.  You know how these things start!  The meal was pretty good when we got past the idea that they would just as soon not bother with serving us.  After splitting this supper Mimi and I returned down Hwy 89 encountering free-range cattle and horses and then, closer to Kalispell, elk and deer.  We arrived back at our little apartment spent but happy with a great sight-seeing day.

Mimi says:

Wow, this was a LONG day of driving. Heading around to the east side of the park from our starting point was a 2 ½ hour drive. But I was rewarded with a F.O.X. Yes, as we were heading up a beautiful stretch of hwy from Browning to Glacier (Many Glacier entrance) I was scouring the landscape for any signs of wildlife and caught a glimpse of a gorgeous fox out in a field. Once again Alan trusted my instincts, hit the brakes, turned the car around and found a spot to pull over so that we could get a picture. Made my day! The other photo op that I wish we had taken advantage of was on our way home after dinner. We were both exhausted…it was probably 11:00 and we had another hour or so of driving left…I had taken over that responsibility since Alan was about to fall asleep (at least until I started driving haha). I learned that Alan is extremely nervous about driving late with the possibility of animals jumping into the road. (So kids, when you want to get back at dad for mornings driving into Greenville for school you can wait til he’s really elderly and take him out to the country for a late night driving experience! ;o}) We came over a hill to find two beautiful elk standing in the road. A mom and her calf…and they were too quick for me to pull over and get the camera.  Oh, and back to  dinner – I was never so happy that we had decided to split a meal. It was a late dinner, probably 8:30 before we stopped, and we ordered the ribeye. The menu didn’t specify the size of the steak and we were too tired to care … and when our waiter, Ben, set the plate down in front of dad we had never seen a steak so big in all our lives. We think it must have been at least at 32 oz steak. It covered the plate and was at least 1 ½ inches thick. Now you can understand why that last 2 ½ hours was an especially difficult drive. We were STUFFED! My other miss of a photo op was the plate!

                                                                   Buffalo!

                                          Hwy 464 from Browning to Glacier - no blue skies

Mr F.O.X

Beautiful reflection of sky and mountains in the lake!

                                                           Back to the park - East entrance

Alan looked at this mountainside for hours through his binoculars. Can you spot the 5 mountain goats?

                                           Where is the bear that goes with the blueberries?

              Just wanted to be sure you understand what Alan was interested in.  (Not the dust and dirt.)

Even big horned sheep. (without the big horns!)

Beautiful sunset.